Aria of the Lesbian Dwarf Diaper Fetishist

Published: March 17, 2002

(Page 2 of 4)

As darkness descends, a beatific chant -- Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!'' -- begins, very much in the reverent structure of a Mozart requiem. Then the chorus gives an idea of what it has come to see: ''My mum used to be my dad/I was jilted by a lesbian dwarf.'' They call out for the ''cocaine abusers with no noses'' and an array of more obscenely labeled types. In full-throated ecstasy, they cry, ''Bring on the losers!'' This command heralds the arrival of Jerry himself, ever abiding the madness over which he presides. Unlike his guests, Jerry does not sing; he must act as the solid ground upon which animals tear one another's flesh.

The Damage Parade hobbles by at a brisk pace. We hear the dishy revelation that Kylie, Tremont's fiancée, is actually a man. Bisexuals are unmasked and belt out the standard ''talk to the hand'' retort. After a tenor coprophiliac exposes his diaper fixation, a 40-ish woman called Baby Jane takes center stage. Clad in fetishistic little-girl attire, she stops the show with a starry-eyed aria about daytime-TV fame. With the hopeless elation of a Kurt Weill heroine, she sings: ''This is my Jerry Springer moment/I don't want this moment to die/So dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians/I don't want this moment to die.''

Dysfunctions heap upon the stage until it becomes an emotional Gettysburg. But any notion that the opera offers a mere pageant of American freaks is shattered -- for, in the atonal chaos that ends Act 1, Jerry Springer is gunned down.

And so, a Don Giovanni without the panache, Jerry descends into hell, where he is called upon to referee a cosmological skirmish that's every bit as histrionic as the brawls on his show. Satan, it seems, is still bitter at being cast out of Paradise. As Jerry looks on in bewilderment, the Devil gets into a verbal scuffle with none other than Jesus Christ. (Their complex four-minute duet climaxes with Jesus singing the following dismissal: ''Taaaaalk to the stigmata!'')

After the kind of baroque plot twists that always figure into opera, a moment of truth arrives. Jerry is given a chance to plead for his soul. He chokes out a botched series of ''Final Thoughts'' -- the homilies that end his show -- but the gambit fails miserably. Disappointed glissandi emanate from the tormented souls who surround him. Then Jerry does something that, in the midst of this freewheeling celebration of vulgarity, is so unexpected that it's hilarious: he evokes William Blake. ''Without contraries is no progression,'' he begins haltingly. ''Energy is pure delight.'' He ends with a roar: ''And all that lives is holy!''

Miraculously, this does the trick. Jerry high-fives his fellow damned. (Metaphysical it may be, but this is Springer.) He is suddenly transported back to the moment of his shooting, where he lies cradled in the arms of Steve, the show's stony-faced security man, and dies. Steve brushes a tear from his cheek, for Jerry's all-seeing, all-abiding eye has closed -- and now all that remains is bleakness and censure and Ricki Lake.

Jerry Springer: The Opera'' might never have come into being without the efforts of Tom Morris, the artistic director who has revitalized the Battersea Arts Center since taking over in 1995. Morris, whose boyish face never quite matches his authoritative gestures, is obsessed with the notion that theater in its current state is creaking to a halt and has become almost medicinal -- a cultural obligation that people submit to without any hope of edification, far less of actual enjoyment. And in spreading the pestilence of posh tedium, opera has been the worst offender.

''It's absurd to think of opera as grand or stodgy,'' Morris says. ''If you'd have characterized it that way to Mozart or Gluck, they'd have laughed you off the premises. Opera evolved as a crude and accessible form. The audience would be eating dinner or having sex while watching it! So the idea now that one should sit in a grim-faced state to impress the president of his company and suffer through, well, that's just madness.''

Under Morris's tenure, the B.A.C., cached in the backwater of Lavender Hill in South London, has become one of the bright spots of the city's fringe theater. Morris is known for putting on ''Scratch Nights,'' evenings filled with 10-minute bits of low-tech cabaret in which artists present not shows but sketchy ideas for shows -- then interrogate audiences about how to arrive at what he calls ''the suitable theatrical language for a subject.'' The method produces odd but never dull results. Another recent Richard Thomas piece consisted entirely of an operatic (and profane) sparring match between two sopranos called ''Tourette's Diva.'' One of the few printable ariettas was ''You remind me of chemotherapy.'' All of which did much to further obscure the line between high art and guttersnipe lingo, if there was ever such a line to begin with.

The inception of ''JS:TO,'' as it is locally known, was not as an opera but as a Richard Thomas Scratch presentation called ''How to Write an Opera About Jerry Springer.'' In front of an audience, Thomas sat alone at a piano and puzzled out how such a work might take shape, tossing bottles of cheap lager to anyone who came up with an interesting idea.